WASHINGTON – Today, during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Chris Wright’s nomination to lead the Department of Energy, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) questioned Wright about his plans to secure Arizona’s energy future while lowering costs and protecting Arizona jobs. 

GALLEGO: Thank you for meeting with me yesterday.  

Number one, I really do appreciate your enthusiasm for nuclear energy. In my time in Congress, I have supported annual appropriations for small modular reactors – we’ve heard a couple times about them here, SMRs – and I do see great potential in them as a safe, renewable energy source. However, SMRs, and nuclear energy more broadly, face several challenges including the cost of scaling, commercialization, public perception, and permitting. As Energy Secretary, what actions will you take to improve the development and deployment of SMRs?

WRIGHT: Thank you, Senator, for the question. Thank you for our great dialogue recently. Congratulations also on being a new senator in this august body.  

It’s a big challenge, and I’m new to government, so I cannot list off the levers I can pull. But I have certainly been in dialogues and investigations about: how do we make it easier to research, invest, and build things? I think DOE has land and facilities that can be helpful in this regard. My current company, Liberty Energy, owns part of a small modular reactor company called Oklo, and their first small modular reactor will be built in the Idaho National Lab, a DOE facility.  

So, is there an enabling role to play to help launch nuclear energy? I think absolutely. I think it’s both creative things like that, it’s also research, it’s also communication about the energy and the technology. This should be a huge part of America’s future energy source. But that won’t happen without action within the legislature of the United States, without action from the Department of Energy, and our incoming administration.

GALLEGO: Great. And I assume this is where we would have some communication from your legislative staff to us, what kind of legislation could we be passing here to scale up SMRs and other types of nuclear energy, to cut through the regulations

WRIGHT: Absolutely. The ADVANCE Act that was passed early on and I think was a great first step. Some steps have been taken, but certainly more can be done.  

GALLEGO: Arizona is a state with ample renewable resources – the sun – and a rapidly growing industrial sector. Since the passage of the IRA, Arizona has seen billions in new clean energy investments and created thousands of good-paying jobs in rural areas. Some Republicans have started talking about dismantling and narrowing the energy provisions from the IRA, which would cost Arizona middle-class jobs, economic growth, and clean energy production. Which, I think we can all agree we want as much energy production, no matter where it comes from. 

Will you commit to protecting clean energy production provisions of the IRA, and how will DOE ensure previously authorized IRA funds are efficiently distributed?  

WRIGHT: Thank you for the question, Senator. Look, I’m not involved in lawmaking. That will be here in the Senate and the House. My goal will be to implement the laws of the land and make some decisions on allocation of capital or funds approved by Congressional bodies. I will seek to allocate those funds in the most efficient way to grow our supply of affordable, reliable, secure energy and to invest in technologies that cannot do that today but have a clear pathway to do that in the future. That, I think, is a critical function of the DOE, from basic research, to emerging technologies, to technologies that have been born but are not at commercial scale yet. I think there’s a critical role from the DOE in all of those things.  

GALLEGO: Now, moving on from generation to transmission. Because it doesn’t make a difference if we can generate but cannot move it, right? I do believe that more transmission construction is vital to meeting the energy demands in the coming years, all over the country. I voted repeatedly to streamline permitting for transmission energy projects. What would your approach be to improve the timeline for transmission project approvals?

WRIGHT: I have been a passionate advocate – as I said in my opening statement – to make it easier to build things in America. It will always be hard – it involves community, and space, and movement of materials. But we need to be able to build things in America.

You cannot build next-generation systems if you cannot build anything. I think President Trump campaigned aggressively on building things again in America, on growing American energy production, on securing our electricity grid, and driving down the price. The only way you can drive down the price of a critical commodity is to grow the supply.

So, there will be many avenues to pursue. As a political novice, I will be learning along the way. I’m learning from all the members of this committee on the effective ways to do that. But I’m 100% committed to growing our grid and energy production and removing barriers standing in the way of doing things in Arizona and across our country.  

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